In
this election year, there are significant parallels between the USA PATRIOT
Act of 2001 and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Enacted in the
aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the PATRIOT Act has augmented the
power of federal authorities to pry into the affairs of innocent Americans.
In the summer of 1798, the United States Congress passed and President John
Adams signed similar legislation. At base, the Alien and Sedition Acts
prohibited criticism of the federal government and gave President Adams the
power to deport any alien he viewed as suspicious. Americans found guilty of
sedition faced prison terms of up to five years and hefty fines. In certain
circumstances, aliens remaining in the United States could be imprisoned “so
long as, in the opinion of the President, the public safety may require.”

This legislation made a
mockery of the First Amendment and deprived aliens of basic due process of
law. The Alien and Sedition Acts were the federal government’s first direct
assault on American civil liberties. From this assault and the response, we
can learn lessons relevant to our own time.

As is often the case with
illiberal legislation, the Acts were a product of temporary Strum und
Drang. In the 1790s, a number of Americans feared the democratic
excesses of the French Revolution would be exported to the United States.
They believed that French agents were plotting the destruction of the
Constitution and the overthrow of the Adams administration. Rumors abounded
in Philadelphia that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison planned to assist a
French invasion force that was sailing across the Atlantic. Some expected a
guillotine would be set up to deal with patriotic Americans. In this
environment, Adams and the Federalists pushed for legislation that would
secure the home front in the face of invasion and that would also, they
hoped, secure Federalist political hegemony.

Fearing revolutionary
France, many Americans at first supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. In
Thomas Jefferson’s words, the people were “made for a moment to be willing
instruments in forging chains for themselves.” But the Federalists attacks
on civil liberties were soon met with opposition. Local meetings were held
throughout the union and the people affixed their signatures to sundry
petitions. These public meetings were well atended and sparked much
interest. In Lexington, Kentucky, for example, a meeting scheduled at a
local church to consider the Acts had to be moved to the town square because
5,000 citizens—twice Lexington’s population—assembled.

To combat the Acts, Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
In these Resolutions, Madison and Jefferson accused Congress of exceeding
its powers and declared the Alien and Sedition Acts void. Times were so
tense that Madison and Jefferson hid their authorship because they feared
prosecutions under the dreaded Sedition Act. The Acts were seen as such a
danger to liberty that there was also some discussion of resisting the
measures by force and secession.

Fortunately, drastic
measures were not needed because the people had a very powerful weapon at
their disposal: the ballot box. In addition, Jefferson and the Republican
Party posed quite a contrast to Adams and the Federalist Party. In the
so-called “Revolution of 1800," the Republicans won a 24-seat majority in
the House of Representatives and Jefferson was elected to the presidency.
Upon taking office, Jefferson suspended all pending prosecutions under the
Sedition Act and pardoned those convicted under the unconstitutional Act.
Jefferson would later boast how this revolution was brought about not by the
sword, “but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage
of the people.”

Under today’s PATRIOT Act,
government investigators can more easily eavesdrop on Internet activity, FBI
agents are charged with gathering domestic intelligence, Treasury Department
officials are charged with creating a financial intelligence-gathering
system for use by the CIA, and the CIA, banished from the field of domestic
intelligence because of abuses in the Vietnam era, is permitted to resume
domestic operations. Separate from the PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration
unsuccessfully argued to the Supreme Court that it could detain American
citizens and foreign nationals on U.S. soil indefinitely and without access
to legal counsel—all when the writ of habeas corpus has not even been
suspended. Even John Adams only claimed such a power over aliens, not
citizens.

Civil libertarians have
been very critical of the PATRIOT Act, believing that the balance between
liberty and power has tipped too far toward the latter. But, with an
election around the corner, the American people can have the final say on
this question. Well, not quite.

Unlike 1800, the people are
given no meaningful choice. Senator John Kerry, the President’s only real
challenger, voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act and authored some of its
provisions. According to the Kerry campaign, the problem is not with the
PATRIOT Act itself, but with those enforcing it, i.e., Attorney General John
Ashcroft. His message for Americans is to keep the powers in place and to
trust him with these powers that he admits have been abused. The ballot box
is a powerful weapon in the people’s hands when they have real choices. With
the franchise the people can defend their liberties and reform the
government. To paraphrase Jefferson, they can effect a bloodless revolution.
However, when both parties offer the people candidates with
indistinguishable views on issues relating to fundamental liberties, the
franchise is an impotent weapon. And if democracy so falters, the people are
left with few attractive options in defense of their freedoms.